PURPOSE To investigate the role of proton MR spectroscopy in pediatric cerebellar tumor diagnosis. METHODS Single voxel pulse sequences with long echo time (135 or 270 milliseconds, voxel size 8 to 19 cm3), were used to obtain proton spectra of primary pediatric cerebellar tumors. Eleven primitive neuroectodermal tumors (patient age, 2 to 12 years; mean, 7 years), 11 low-grade astrocytomas (a...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Pilomyxoid astrocytoma (PMA) is a recently described tumor that typically occurs in the chiasmatic-hypothalamic region in young children and has unique histopathologic and clinical characteristics. These tumors have been previously diagnosed as pilocytic astrocytoma (PA). PMA appears to have a higher rate of recurrence and CSF dissemination than typical PA. METHODS We a...

BACKGROUND Pilomyxoid astrocytoma (PMA) shows a higher rate of recurrence and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) dissemination than does pilocytic astrocytoma (PA). In this article, we discuss the treatment of PMA. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between 1992 and 2007, the authors treated 5 patients. Two of these were male, three female. Their ages ranged from 3 months to 11 years. RESULTS Three patients show...

Pilocytic astrocytoma is a slow-growing brain tumor that occurs more often in children with a benign course and long clinical history compared to diffuse astrocytomas. Pilocytic astrocytomas may rarely show malignant transformation and radiotherapy plays a key role in the treatment of malignant transformation. In this study, we present a pilocytic astrocytoma case with no radiotherapy history a...

Pilomyxoid astrocytoma (PMA) is a recently described neoplasm. PMA shares few features with pilocytic astrocytoma (PA), the most common central nervous system (CNS) tumor in the pediatric population, yet displays histological differences. Previous studies have shown that PMAs have more aggressive biological behavior as compared to PA. These findings suggest that PMA may be a unique and distinct...

Pilomyxoid astrocytoma (PMA) is a rare tumor that was previously classified as pilocytic astrocytoma (PA) because of similar histological features. [1] Compared with PA, PMA demonstrates more aggressive biological behavior, and was assigned to World Health Organization (WHO) α grade according to the 2007 WHO Classification. [2] PMA in the spinal cord is extremely rare. We documented probably th...

This case demonstrated the classic gross, pathologic, CT, and MR findings of pontine astrocytoma. The role of functional brain imaging in identifying regrowth of tumor was illustrated and the differential diagnosis of a brain stem lesion summarized.

Fear conditioned changes of heart rate and skin conductance responses were investigated in patients with medial cerebellar lesions. A classical conditioning paradigm with a tone as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and an electrical shock as the unconditioned stimulus (US) was tested on five patients with medial cerebellar lesions due to surgery for astrocytoma and five controls. The CS preceded th...

We studied language and visuo-spatial functions of twelve children and adolescents who had undergone surgery for cerebellar astrocytoma without subsequent radiation or chemotherapy and compared them with 27 age-, genderand education-matched healthy control subjects. In order to study possible lateralization of the functions of the left and right cerebellar hemispheres, subjects performed severa...